The Wild Goose Chase?

Apologies for the delay - I didn't mean to leave it so long before posting again [[and no, I wasn't just waiting until I'd done something worthy of a humourous blog title, as opposed to 'Yet More Patch Bashing'...]].

Monday through to Thursday saw the Patch being Bashed in a mighty and vigourous fashion. I tried to cover a lot of ground while keeping an eye on Blackball and the berry bushes. It's been good exercise, and not without results here and there.

Monday was chiefly notable, with the aid of hindsight, as being the last day the male Brambling visited the garden. That I know of. Having been caught out already by this bird seemingly going off with half the Chaffinches before sneaking back [ie. becoming more mobile in the area now that the ground's less frozen].

Tuesday had a good Yellow-leg candidate [1w as almost always] on the Harbour pontoon, Purple Sands on the granite boulders, a 1w Razorbill right in the Harbour mouth [it was preening and I naturally worried about oiling, it being right below me, but couldn't see any on it] and 2 BN Grebe and a large diver sp. [probably GN] out in the Bay.

Wednesday saw me walk down to the bottom of my Patch - Paignton Pier. No good gulls to report, but a couple of very welcome groups out to sea! On the way down I was amazed to see 6 Little Grebe together off Corbyn's Head. I've never seen Little Grebes on the sea and never on my Patch either! The nearest habitat for them is either Clennon Ponds, the Dart or the Teign; I suppose they must have been very thoroughly flushed... By the time I was headed back north I'd seen 3 BN Grebe, 16 GC Grebe, the male C Scoter and 14 Razorbill, plus 17 Turnstone [15 of those at Preston]. Looking out from Preston I got another surprise as a pod of Bottlenose Dolphin were coming in from the east and angling towards Broadsands! I counted 7 for sure [including a calf] and there could easily have been twice that number. Brilliant!

Thursday was a day of bashing the posh bits and getting stares from lots of rich old people. I'm always very cheery and ready with a grin and have not had the police called on me. Yet. ;) I managed to get two Patch Yearticks - Green and GS Woodpeckers, and both on sight. The GSW was a showy male, sitting in a bare tree and kicking for almost 5 minutes at quite close range. Very nice.

Today I went up to Curry Moor in zumerzet, having heard tell of a Lesser Snow Goose and wanting to see one that might actually not be an escaped hybrid thingy like the two dinky ones that winter on the Exe..... I arrived to freezing mist [having left the freezing fog around the border] and then had a nice yomp along the Tone to where the Snow Goose and its Barnacley friends had been seen on Thursday and still were. [[If I'd gone straight there then a) they'd have been somewhere else and b) I'd have been unable to park there anyway. These being The Rules.]] It was a nice healthy walk, with those nice gates you have to climb over even when you open them, but enlivened by Stonechats, winter thrushes [no Duskies, of course..] and a tarty Reed Bunting on a withy stem. :)

Finding the right place, the geese had lots of friends with them; Canadas and Mutes of course, but also Pintail, Wigeon, Teal, Lapwing and 14 Dunlin. Said Snow Goose was present [[I was expecting it to have gone - the blog title was always going to be what it is]], albeit at the back, but through the Big Scope I got a good look at it. I'd decided to forfeit any pretense at competence in front of the local birders present and taken Duivendijk along - this turned out to be a good thing as the bird was not the nice clean adult I was expecting!

Size compared to the Barnacles was right for Lesser Snow, as was structure [bill size, shape and grinning patch were right] and most of the plumage, but a few bits were troublesome; it had dark spots on the neck, especially the back of its neck; it had a noticeable brownish tinge to its main body feathers; it had dusky legs [though not black]; and it had a mostly dusky bill [though with some pink]. I shamelessly dug Duivendijk out and discovered that all the 'off' plumage features were right for a 1w. The ID Guide also said having white-fringed black tertials ruled out a hybrid [it had them]. Getting home, I've checked The Font of All Wisdom [that'll be BWPi] and it shows that not only is the amount of white variable [video of Blue morphs show birds with much less than the Curry Moor bird], but also that bare parts start dusky in juveniles and go pink over the first winter and sometimes into the first summer, with near-adult plumage being obtained over the first winter also.

Case closed? Maybe not. This evening, it's been suggested on SOS that the bird may be a 'known hybrid Snow x Barnacle', come up from Dorset with a flock of Barnacles that were on The Fleet until recently. I've not seen any photos of this bird, so can't speculate, but I've not seen any pictures of Snow x Barnacle hybrids online that looked like the Curry Bird. Time will tell. Maybe.

Ducks, geese, frickin' gulls... Why can't they just behave?

Anyway, after a much warmer walk back in the now bright sunshine, I went to have a look for the Cranes, but despite having carefully written-down gen, I managed to not find them... Drat.

On to West Sedgemoor for a late lunch. Not been there before; it's dinky! 8 spaces in the car park... What it lacked in space it made up for in birds, though. As soon as I'd switched off the engine a Nuthatch dropped down in front of my car, and there were plenty more in the way of woodland birds coming to the array of feeders. Time was pressing - well, my grumbling stomach was - so I didn't fully explore and decided to forgo the hide in hope of getting my scope on all the ducks and waders the blurb promised..

I found a bench with a view over the moor and, with only Wigeon and Teal [two big blocks] and Lapwing [everywhere] in sight, I set up the scope with the intent to primarily scan for raptors. After finding 4 Buzzards on 4 posts I scanned past a fifth.. wait a minute, that looks odd! Back to it and I realise its got a lot out the back for a Buzz... Zooming in and giving it a hard going-over I see it's a ringtail! Whole time I was there, this gorgeous Hen Harrier sat on it's post; sometimes doing impressive head gymnastics looking at the ground below it, sometimes preening, sometimes just sitting there. Wow. Gets better. Looking right to the far side of the moor, I see a big white thing beside a ditch - one of the bigger ones with built up brambly banks. Hmm, a Mute Swan? Oh no, its a Great White Egret! :D Talk about long-range birding...

All in all a very interesting day.

[[Edit: No less than 6 GWEs around Ham Wall today! I was watching the West Sedgemoor bird from about 1400 to 1415, and it moved out of sight; I never saw it fly. {Doesn't mean it didn't, of course} Seven Great Whites in somerset? Could be...]]